CALL AND RESPONSE, stories

289pp., paperback , London, 2023

"A good short story is a bit of alchemy, showing us so much in so few pages. Gothataone Moeng’s debut collection does this over and over, each story surprising with its music, its warmth, its command of language. Moeng writes of contemporary Africa, and if the settings and customs feel unfamiliar to Western readers, there’s something universal and true in these tales that grapple with family, faith, and how we make our way in the world." Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind

"Call and Response is a beautiful collection. What sharply observed vignettes - linked by striking figures, vivid details, a wry and ruminative mood, and deep insight into the vicissitudes of family life. They reminded me sometimes of the work of Anton Chekhov, sometimes that of Bessie Head: calm, wise, yet searching, restless, like a still pond bestirred by undercurrents, or in Moeng's lambent words, 'like a torchlight helpless over the vast velvet of night.'" Namwali Serpell, author of The Old Drift

Gothataone Moeng was born in Serowe, Botswana. She was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Fiction, a Summer Workshop scholar at Tin House, and an Emerging Writer Fellow at A Public Space. Her writing has appeared in American Short Fiction, One Story, Virginia Quarterly Review, A Public Space, Ploughshares and Oxford American. She lives in Provincetown, Massachusetts.